“Once again, Dave Yost is a day late, and Ohio taxpayers are still hundreds of millions of dollars short, as he tries to take out the trash by posting his 2015 Chartergate report on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving,” said Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper. “Dave Yost has repeatedly abdicated his responsibility to hold wrongdoers accountable when it comes to charter schools, whether it’s been this data-rigging or ECOT, and he can’t be trusted as Attorney General to hold charter schools accountable. Ohio schoolchildren and taxpayers deserve an independent investigation.”

An initial review of the report suggests a possible cover-up: A number of David Hansen’s emails provided to Auditor of State investigators inexplicably did not include sender or receiver lines, and Hansen’s laptop had memory removed, raising the question if other senior staff and administration officials knew about Hansen’s data-rigging, and if so, who.